


Home (Is Wherever I'm With You)

by wolfstarheart



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, M/M, Not Actually That Sad, Soulmate-Identifying Timers, Steve Rogers and the 21st Century, Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Tony Stark-centric, Tony-centric, please read this im dying, sorta - Freeform, the stony is pretty much all fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-12-23 14:14:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11991507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wolfstarheart/pseuds/wolfstarheart
Summary: Tony Stark's timer was stuck at zero. Tony Stark didn't have a soulmate.At least, that's what he thought. Then Steve woke up.





	Home (Is Wherever I'm With You)

**Author's Note:**

> AU where everyone has a timer somewhere on their body counting down to when they first look into their soulmate's eyes. When you meet them, your timer goes red.

Tony has never believed in sentimental things, things like magic and Santa Claus and love. So when his soulmate mark appears, right below his ribcage, a tattoo that reads 00:00:00:00, he shrugs and gets back to his work. "Makes sense," he mumbles to himself. Tony Stark is twelve years old and there isn't an AI to reply in that cool, slightly smug British accent yet, but he's lucky enough to have the real thing (for now, at least). 

"Master Tony," begins Jarvis, watching him from the doorway, "that doesn't mean that your soulmate isn't out there."

Tony shrugs lightly and tugs his t-shirt down. He's glad he doesn't have to look at the ugly thing anymore. "Doesn't matter, Jarvis. I don't want one." 

Jarvis frowns, but turns away once Tony begins sketching. (Out of all of the boy's remarkable qualities, his ability to deflect or avoid a topic he's not ready to talk about just yet is one of the steadfast butler's least favorite ones). And if Tony's hands tremble ever so slightly as he starts on a blueprint for some sort of robot-- well, he'll attribute it to the four cups of coffee that are currently in his system. Nothing to worry about. Not that anyone's worrying in the first place. 

 

Tony is fourteen when he has his first drink. Howard presses the glass of expensive whiskey into his hands and says, with a cool smirk that makes Tony's blood run cold even now that he's hardly a child cowering behind his mother, "Drink up. You're a man now, aren't you?"

And he isn't one to argue, so he downs the whiskey and makes sure that Howard can't see him wince when it burns his throat as it goes down. "Yes sir," he says, and his voice sounds foreign even to him. 

(If Maria was here-- well, he doesn't know that she'd  _stop_ him, because Howard always gets what he wants. But she'd put up a fight, at least, and give him disapproving looks until he sends Tony back to his room with a clap to his back that will ring around the study long after he leaves. But she's not here, so Howard refills his glass with a wicked grin.)

And so Tony is fourteen when he gets drunk for the first time, although he'll deny just  _how_ drunk he was later on in life when the days of losing control with just a couple of whiskeys are far behind him, and Howard sneers when he stumbles as he tries to leave. "Weak," hisses Howard, and even when he's quite past being tipsy Tony isn't stupid enough to fight back, so. 

So he nods, slurs, "I'll-- I'll do better, Dad," and that seems to placate him for the time being. 

"You know," says Howard, and he's perched on his desk now, and it's the most relaxed he's ever seen the man in the fourteen years he's been alive. "I was glad when I found out that your timer's dead."

Tony shrinks back. "How'd you know?" he asks slowly. 

Howard ignores the question, and leans forward, and his gaze is fixed firmly on Tony. He spent his childhood craving his attention, and now that he has it, Tony starts to think that it's worse than every night he spent being ignored in favor of Captain-fuckin'-America. "Oh, Tony," he says, and his voice is silky smooth, "Stark men don't have hearts to love with."

Later, when he's throwing up in the safety of his bathroom, where Howard can't hear the obvious tells of his weakness, Tony rests his clammy forehead on the cold mirror above his sink and exhales, alcohol-tinged breath fogging up the glass. "It's not like he's wrong," he tells himself, like it's a mantra he has to repeat so he can convince himself that it's true. "Not about that, at least."

 

Tony is only just sixteen when he meets a boy he will soon come to call Rhodey. Now, though, it's just James, the boy who'd been assigned to his dorm after a mix-up that Tony had begged and pleaded with the administration to fix, to no avail (he's not used to sharing his food, okay, much less his living space). 

 _James_ is tall, broad-shouldered, and smiles warmly at him in the hallway when Tony swings the door open with a sigh. "Hi. I'd introduce myself, but I figure you already know who I am," the other boy says. 

Tony, at least a foot shorter than him, tries to look welcoming, although his smirk-grimace probably does the opposite of that. "You know, I'm usually the one saying that," he says. "Come in, I guess." 

James sticks to himself, at first, and Tony's grateful for it. He's not the type to party, and only really comes out of his room when Tony's little soirees have gone on for far too long so he can shut it down and go to sleep. (Tony will grumble and sigh about it, but in the morning he'll give Rhodes a grudging smile of thanks when he wakes up to a glass of water and a couple of aspirins on his bedside table). He's not a genius, but he makes As, if the graded work that's often spread on the dining table is anything to go by, and he doesn't comment on Tony's projects apart from the pointed, thoughtful question every now and again that makes Tony think he sees far more than he lets on. 

Then-- then Tony has a girl over, and they're kissing, and then they're doing more. Or at least, that was the plan. She has ringlets of soft golden hair going down to her back, and she sits there in nothing more than a lacy bra and denim shorts while she undoes Tony's shirt with warm, nimble fingers. She kisses her way down his neck, runs her hand down his chest, and he's about to sigh with relief and assume she didn't notice it until she leaps back with a wince. "Your timer," she gasps. 

Tony looks down, eyes dull. It rests, like it has for the last four years, at zero. He tries not to look at it most days (he hates the sight of it), and it looks ugly, dark against his pale skin. _W_ _as it always this big?_ He looks up at the girl and tries for a smile. "Ignore it," he says, infusing the words with as much charm as he can muster given the fact that his heart is pounding in his ears. "Let's finish what we started, Annabelle."

"It's  _Annabeth_ ," she snaps, and pulls on her t-shirt with unexpected force. "And I'm sorry, but I can't do this." She gestures at his mark with a sort of helpless revulsion, and Tony doesn't realize he's sitting leaned against his headboard with his shirt still mostly undone long after she leaves until James finds him there. 

"What happened?" he asks, voice gentler than it usually is, and Tony's eyes are glassy as they find his roommate's. It's hard to focus, but he does anyway, if only out of sheer willpower. Rhodes must see something in his face that's more than his trademark arrogant smirk, because he walks into the room without giving away anything less than confidence (it's the first time he's ever been in here when Tony's awake-slash-sober, and he'd be ashamed of the mess if he had the energy to feel anything at all). He knows he sees  _it_ when his eyes widen almost imperceptibly, and Tony half expects him to walk out of there and never come back. (It's not like it's normal, even for a college where normality is supposed to be boring. In the end, people are slaves to this little timer that reminds them that love is real even when the world's going to shit. And Tony, well-- Tony's made of iron and wires and there's nothing else inside of him, and this is proof.) 

But he doesn't. Rhodes sits down beside him and does up his shirt with hands that are gentler than Tony remembers. "Screw her," Rhodes tells him, voice hard. 

"I was trying to," Tony says, and he tries for a laugh that comes out all strangled and wrong. 

He doesn't take the bait. "Doesn't matter what that timer says, and you should know that better than anyone," James says, and his jaw is clenched. "You're a better person than that girl will ever be, soulmatesbe damned."

Tony just smiles and sits up and throws Rhodes a beer, and then they watch movies and eat nachos and, slowly, Rhodes becomes  _Rhodey_ and roommates becomes friends, becomes  _best friends_ (and there's a phrase Tony never thought he'd ever get to claim). They don't ever talk about the marks after that, not even when they're really, reallydrunk, and if Tony catches him looking at the mark when his shirt's riding up as he works with eyes that are soft with sympathy, well: they don't talk about that either. 

 

He's barely twenty-one when he gets the call. He listens, frozen with his free hand still wrapped around a screw driver, as the officer on the other end tells him with practiced ease that yes, his parents are dead. Twenty-one and all alone in the world, and that would've sent him spiraling if he hadn't been alone since the day he was born. 

Instead, he thanks the police man, who's probably relieved that he doesn't have to deal with one of Tony's infamous meltdowns over the phone, and hangs up. Then he gets into his father's finest car (it's vintage, made years before he was born, and still shines like it was polished yesterday. Hell, it probably was), and ignores Jarvis' offer to call for a chauffeur. He drives and drives until he arrives at the hospital, and it might just be the first time since he got his license that he's well under the speed limit. He smiles at the nurses who greet him and take him to a secluded room near the back, where there are two beds and dark sheets that stand out against the blinding white of the walls, the equipment, the lights. He waves off their sympathy and tugs off the first sheet with hands that don't shake or shudder or give away anything at all. 

He stares at Maria's body, at a face that is beautiful even when it is shattered. Tony almost reaches out to trace the part of her jaw that still is pooling with congealed blood, and thinks better of it. Instead he goes higher, above small bow lips that are frozen in a frown, above a nose that is broken at least three different ways, until his hand stops at her eyes. They're open (they're blown wide open and they may be empty and lifeless but Tony can see every bit of fear captured within them before her heart stopped). He shuts her eyelids with a tenderness he didn't think he had it in him to posses, and the nurses watch from the doorway, silently judging his every move. 

He steps back, and that's when he sees it: a timer on her bicep, revealed now that her couture dress (always with the sleeves, and Tony used to think that was because of an old-fashioned sense of modesty, but--) has been ripped apart at the seams. He freezes in place, and he'd step forward and get a closer look except there's no mistaking the fact that it is slowly ticking down, even as she lays there with all the life sucked out of her. 

_9844:18:55:32._ _9844:18:55:31. 9844:18:55:30._

He stands there, watching it, until finally-- finally, it comes to a halt at  _9844:18:55:09._

Then he pulls the sheet back over her and turns away. "Have them cremated," he tells the nurses, voice steel as it cuts through the silence. 

They flinch. "What about the funeral?" one ventures, hands nervously tugging at her uniform, and Tony's glare is enough to shut her up. 

(It's not for  _him_. Never for him. He could care less if the whole world woke up tomorrow to headlines that read that Howard Stark, in the end, died without love. 

But she deserves the last semblance of dignity she could be afforded. After all that-- after years of Howard, a man who could never love her, after years of  _him,_ the product of a union colder than the ice the great Captain was still trapped in-- she deserves this, at least.)

 

Afghanistan happens. Afghanistan happens in the blink of an eye: one moment he's posing for a photo with that man-- no, a boy, he was only a _boy_ \-- and the next, he's waking up in a cave feeling like a dead man. 

Yinsen tells him that the car battery propped up on the table beside him and the piece of metal lodged in his chest are what's keeping him alive, and it terrifies him. It's not like he thinks himself invincible. On the contrary, Tony Stark has spent a surprising amount of time wondering about how he'd die. Alcohol poisoning, a car accident like his dear old parents, maybe even assassination. But this? This is far more horrific than he ever could've imagined.

Yinsen tells him about his family: a wife, two children, a life he can return to once this is all over ( _if_ this is ever over). Yinsen asks him if he has one of his own, but he knew the answer before he ever said the words. He must've seen the timer, Tony knows, if he'd performed heart surgery on him. The good doctor pities him; he can hear it as clear as day when he muses, "So you're a man who has everything, and nothing." Tony can't bring himself to disagree with that. 

When they waterboard him they yell out taunts about his timer (of course, they've seen it too). He catches bits of it during the few seconds where he's gasping in all the air he can before he's submerged in the icy-cold water once more: Broken. Evil. Soulless. A monster. The words ring in his head even once he's taken back to the cave and allowed to slump to his knees before the weak fire that crackles by his side. He's been called worse by the media, but back then he'd have a cocky response right at his lips. Now, he doesn't bother replying. Now, he builds. 

The armor weighs him down. It's clunky and almost embarrassing when he thinks of what he could come up with if he had his lab. ( _But if he had his lab, if none of this had never happened,_ Tony thinks, _he'd be making missiles instead of a metal suit that can fly_ ). But it works, and he's only pleasantly surprised when he kills the men trying to shoot him down and lumbers out of the cave. 

And then he finds Yinsen, and damn it, they had a  _plan_. Tony glares at him even as Yinsen admits that his wife and children are dead. He's seen death before, sure, but not like this, not when there's a man who traded his life for Tony's. A life for a life. A soul for a soul. Yinsen's mark, dark on his neck and almost completely covered with blood, is legible enough that Tony can discern the row of zeroes that would be identical to his own if they weren't the warm crimson color of a found soulmate.

Yinsen groans. "This isn't-- isn't _it_ for you," he mumbles, and a shuddering hand reaches out so it touches the piece of armor that hides Tony's mark. "You still have a-- a chance at lo--"

Yinsen's arm goes slack. Tony runs.

 

He kisses Pepper and she kisses him back. Then she pulls away, blue eyes downcast. "Wow, Pep, am I that bad a kisser?" he jokes. 

She pulls up her shirt in silence, and Tony's about to say something suggestive when he sees her timer: 42:09:33:17. 

"Forty-two days," he mumbles, and Pepper bites her lip as she lets her shirt fall back down. "That's awfully close."

"I'm sorry, Tony," she says. This time, he lets her go. 

 

He's dying. He's intimately aware of this, don't get him wrong. He's even come to terms with it (you have to, in this line of business, because it's naive to assume that you're going to live a long and happy life when you're trying to save the world). 

There's a part of him that craves for closeness even as he pushes everyone-- Pepper, Happy, Rhodey-- away. He assumes it's his biological clock, crying out for a love that it isn't aware Tony can never feel, and so he ignores it in favor of staying logical. His blood toxicity level climbs up, and numbers haunt his dreams. Sometimes, it's not a percentage, but a time that ticks closer to zero but never truly reaches it. 

In the end, Howard saves his life. (Indirectly. Tony still claims credit for synthesizing a whole new element, because he's fucking awesome like that) and he'd laugh at the irony if he isn't so happy that he's not about to drop dead of palladium poisoning. In the end, after everyone's hugged him and cried into his shoulder, he sleeps without another person beside him to keep the bed warm. 

In the end, Tony Stark is alone, and he should be used to that after nearly four decades of it, but he aches for something he cannot ever have anyway. It hurts more than dying ever did. 

 

One morning, Tony wakes up to an almost unbearable pain right below his ribcage. He howls for Jarvis, who informs him, coolly, that no, his vitals are perfectly normal. So Tony pulls his shirt up gingerly, and nearly has a heart attack when he sees his mark: 01:12:21:48. "Jarvis, what the fuck is this?" he snaps, and for once, the AI is speechless. "Look up any instances of soulmarks changing." (Tony entertains the notion of this being a hallucination or some kind of Asgardian magic, except if Jarvis hasn't detected anything wrong, this is  _real_ , and he'd almost prefer being under the influence of a spell to whatever this is). 

He waits until his mark reads 01:12:19:13 before Jarvis says, slowly, "A case in the 17th century, Sir. A girl whose soulmate died of scarlet fever and woke up the next morning with a timer still going."

"What happened to her?"

Jarvis lets out something that could almost be a sigh. "She was burned at the stake, Sir," he says. 

Tony shakes his head. "She had two soulmates, which apparently was the work of the Devil in those days, but I never had one in the first place. Keep looking, Jarv," he says, and the pain is beginning to die down, because suddenly he can breathe without wanting to throw up. (If that's a symptom of anxiety instead of a natural response to his fucking soulmark coming to life after forty-one years of being stuck at zero, well, he elects to ignore that). 

Two hours later, he gets a call from a blocked number. He recognizes Nick Fury's voice the moment it's telling him that they have Captain America.  _Alive_. 

"When can I see him?" he says, voice surprisingly calm despite the fact that he might just throw up. 

"When he's awake," Fury tells him, almost daring Tony to disobey him. 

When he hangs up, Tony tells Jarvis to put his earlier order on hold, and gets into a car. "I'm not so sure this is a great idea, Sir," Jarvis says, with only the slightest hint of disapproval permeating into his voice. 

Tony rolls his eyes, and lets the car whir to life beneath his fingertips. "Fury, Schmury, Jarv. I don't play by the rules, least of all SHIELD's," he says flippantly, and tosses up his middle finger for good measure before speeding out of the driveway. 

What he doesn't say: that Howard spent his life looking for Captain America instead of raising his own child or spending time with his wife. That the first birthday present he can remember receiving was a book about Captain America's heroic defeat of HYDRA ("Maybe you'll learn something, Anthony. Huh, that's a thought.") That he spent all of his teenage years flinching every time somebody mentioned the superhero's name. That he met a guy named Steve once and picked a fight with him just because he was blonde too. 

And it could be mere coincidence that his timer decided to pick today to actually function normally, except he doesn't believe in things like coincidences. No, something's going to happen soon, and he  _needs_ to be at SHIELD headquarters (which is apparently where they're holding Steve, according to Jarvis, who'd hacked some of their systems a couple of months ago). 

So he flirts with a few agents until they let him in, lies to a couple more about helping with the defrosting and making sure that Cap won't wake up with some kind of amnesia, and then he's sitting by a bed that looks surprisingly normal given that America's mightiest and bravest is curled up on top of it, chest rising and falling rhythmically underneath a thick comforter that he probably needs after seventy years of being frozen in the Arctic. 

"Fuck, Rogers, he never let you go," Tony says, voice sounding off even to his own ears. What he also doesn't say: that he used to blame him for it, but seeing him here, eyes closed and skin cold, means he can't anymore. The neglect, and all the rest, that was all on Howard. Not that he's in the habit of denying himself more reasons to hate the man, but it was more palatable, as a child, to think that the reason his own father didn't love him was because he loved Captain America more. 

Fury finds him there, perched in one of the uncomfortable little chairs by Steve's side, eyes fixed on his face, and nearly murders him. Tony argues with everything he's got ("It's not like I'm about to kill the guy, and besides, you need somebody to sound the alarm in case he wakes up or something goes wrong, right?") but he stands up to leave once Fury threatens to have him tranquilized-- Jesus, the man would probably do it, too.

And before he leaves, he casts one long look back at Steve's body, lying there so unnaturally still. "I'll be back tomorrow," he finds himself saying, and Fury rolls his eyes. "And the day after that. Until he wakes up."

In the car, he pulls up his shirt and almost expects the timer to read zeroes again, like the events of this morning were just a cruel dream to raise his hopes. But no: it blinks 01:11:19:36 at him, almost like it's taunting him, and he's never felt more impatient as he lets the fabric fall back down. 

One day. He can do this. 

 

When he gets to SHIELD the next day, his timer reads 00:05:39:09. Plenty of time, considering he expects to be kicked out in under an hour like he was yesterday. But when he arrives, people are running around like there's no tomorrow, and an agent stationed at Steve's door points a gun at him when he tries to enter. 

"Jeez, no need to get feisty," he says, raising his hands in mock-surrender, and the agent narrows her eyes at him but lowers the gun. "What's happening here anyway?"

She sighs a long-suffering sigh. "Fury didn't tell you?"

"Fury doesn't tell me anything," Tony says, and turns his best puppy dog eyes on her, willing her to confide in him. 

She raises an eyebrow, and then shrugs. "Well, you'll find out soon enough anyway," she mutters, and then looks him straight in the eye. "Rogers woke up."

" _What?"_ He tries lunging for the door again, but then the barrel of the gun is lying right over his reactor, and her eyes are stormy as he steps back slowly. "When the hell did he wake up?"

"Something like ten minutes ago? You've got impeccable timing, Mr Stark," she says, and this time she doesn't lower the gun even though he's fairlysure that she's not going to shoot him either way. "You're going to be waiting awhile, though. I'm under strict orders to not let you in."

"Me, specifically? I'm hurt, truly," Tony says, bringing a hand to his heart and letting out a fake, overly dramatic gasp. His eyes are still trained on the door, behind which, he knows, Steve Rogers is awake and alive and breathing. The timer stopped hurting him yesterday, technically, but it might as well be burning a hole through his skin because he can practically feel it counting down. In a few short hours, he will meet a soulmate he spent his whole life believing didn't exist. And he doesn't exactly know (or want to face) what this has got to do with Steve, only that he is absolutely certain that it does. 

She rolls her eyes, seemingly unaware of the turmoil that's currently raging within him. "Not just you. Anyone. They want him to believe he's still in the forties, you know, just to ease him into it, and you-- or anyone else, for that matter-- would definitely not help convince him of that."

"That's perhaps the stupidest plan I've ever heard," Tony says bluntly, and folds his arms across his chest. "So you're going to tell a guy who died in the middle of World War fuckin' Two that he's still in the forties and expect him to just accept it without freaking out or demanding to know how the war ended or asking to see his friends? And what's going to happen once he leaves the room? There's no easy way to break it to a guy that he's woken up seventy years into the future, there just isn't, and Fury should be smart enough to realize that." Tony doesn't realize he's raising his voice until he stops, out of breath, and realizes that his throat is sore from practically yelling at the poor girl (who, in her defense, probably didn't even come up with the plan in the first place). He winces. "Sorry. But, really, it's a ridiculous plan."

Her eyes are widened, almost comically so, and she works her mouth like she's scrambling for an answer: an answer that she never gets to give, because suddenly Steve Rogers knocks the door  open with such force that if they'd leaped aside a second too late, they would've been buried under the metal. And then Steve is gone in the blink of an eye, dashing off without paying the two of them a second glance, and Tony? 

Tony is frozen in place, and it's all he can do to murmur, "Can I say I told you so now?" 

 

Fury marches Steve back into SHIELD a few hours later. Tony catches a glimpse of them from the boardroom he was shuttled into once they realized that Steve was gone, and something inside of him twinges ever so slightly. He doesn't need to check his mark to know that the timer must be in the minutes now.

 _Breathe, Stark, breathe_ , he tells himself. Then, of course, he decides to ignore his own advice, and storms after Fury and Rogers with enough confidence that the agents hovering by the door don't even bother trying to stop him. 

He follows from a distance and nearly loses the two of them a couple of times, but soon enough he's striding down a length of winding, twisting hallways deep within the headquarters, and he's never been here before but he can sort of understand why. It's empty, mostly, except for a couple of women he assumes are nurses but doesn't get the chance to confirm because he ducks inside a room that is furnished like a cheap Ikea display. (Who the hell did SHIELD hire as their interior designer, anyway?) When they pass, he slips out and closes the door shut quietly behind him, and carries on, hoping against hope that the two of them aren't that far away. 

They aren't: he speeds up and after awhile he can begin to hear Fury talking about sleeping quarters and food. Steve doesn't ever reply except to mumble a 'yes' every now and again, and when they stop Tony stays hidden behind a corner and listens. 

"So this is where you'll be sleeping," Fury is saying, and Tony can hear the sound of a key turning in a lock (how quaint). "There are a list of numbers next to the phone, for emergency purposes. Make yourself at home. We'll get you an apartment sometime soon, but until then you're going to stay here. We good, Rogers?"

He hears the sound of heavy breathing, and then Steve's voice, lower this time, and almost so quiet that Tony misses him saying, "Yeah, we're good, Director."Then the door slams shut behind him, and Fury stalks off, already jabbering on about something or the other on his comm link. 

Tony doesn't dare to move until Fury's footsteps have long since faded away, and it isn't even the fear of being caught that's making his heart pound and his skin go clammy. He steals a glance at the timer: 00:00:05:38. And-- and this is it, isn't it? 

So he walks towards Steve's door (00:00:04:19) and spends a few seconds just staring at the hunk of metal, so clinical and plain, aware that behind it lies a person that's going to change his world completely.  _Don't be a coward, Stark,_ he chides himself, and then knocks once. And then twice more, for good measure. The sound of his knuckles snapping against the cold surface rings in his ears, mixing with his heartbeat to create the most terrifying symphony he's ever heard, and then Steve calls out, "Is this Fury?", and his breath catches in his chest. 

"I'm not Fury, thank God," Tony says breathlessly, and then lets out a little chuckle. "My name's Tony, and no, I'm not about to kill you." He's certain that he's blown it, that Fury or Agent (his name is  _not_ Phil, no matter what Pepper says) or Hill or some other guy with SHIELD's going to step out from behind a corner and give him hell for disturbing Captain America, but then the door swings open with a creak that somehow manages to sound uncertain, and Tony takes a deep breath and strides in. 

"So this is where the great Captain America is going to be staying," he says, voice unexpectedly cheery, and he casts a quick eye around the room and frowns at the clinical dullness of the metal bedframe, the simple wood desk, the closet that undoubtedly holds a couple of basic tees and a pair of blue jeans. "SHIELD really needs to work on their rooms, because this is fuckin' depressing. This definitely wasn't what my father had in mind when he spent decades trying to find you in all that ice." 

"Your father?" Steve asks from somewhere behind him, but Tony's too anxious now to stop or to turn and face him (because he knows what's happening, can feel it on his skin right below his ribs, and yet refuses to accept it), so he just paces in front of the window and peeks out of the curtain. It's hardly a great view, and Tony stares at the cars whirring away like little beetles on the road below him before yanking the fabric shut with more force than was probably needed. 

"I'm sorry," Tony says, quieter this time, and his hands shake but don't let go of the curtain clasped within them. "For blaming you, all those years. I know it doesn't matter either way, because you were a Capsicle while I was a kid and Howard's dead anyhow, but-- I'm sorry. Not your fault. I'm sure you're a great person." 

"Howard?" Steve says, and Tony flinches. "He's-- he's gone?"

"Car crash," Tony mumbles. "Died upon impact. Ages ago, really-- that was back in 1991. They said he was drunk, so--" 

"Who are you, Tony?" Steve asks, and he doesn't sound nervous or confused anymore. His voice is commanding, strong, and Tony doesn't take orders from anybody but if he was a different man he'd turn around right now and tell Steve every secret he's ever kept. 

Instead, with his back still facing Steve, Tony lets go of the curtain and lets his head rest against the window, closing his eyes and letting the sunlight dance against his eyelids. "I think I'm your soulmate." 

He turns, and meets Steve's sea-blue eyes for a fraction of a second, and he  _knows_ , without even having to check the timer, that this is it. That  _he_ is it. His stomach drops, and Steve looks like he's trying to find the right words to say, and Tony just-- he can't do this. 

So he runs. He bolts right out of his room, into the maze of hallways and doors that all look exactly alike, until he's found his way back to the foyer and is shoving aside a few guards so he can get the hell out of the place. He runs down the streets of Manhattan, cuts across traffic and ignores the honks and the angry yells, and he doesn't stop running until he's throwing up outside the back of some Chinese restaurant, and it hits him, then, that Howard was right. 

(About him being weak, yeah, but also about that other thing: no matter what the timer says, Stark men don't get a shot at love). 

 

"Sir, Captain Rogers wants to see you," Jarvis says, and Tony buries his head in his hands and turns the volume down on the movie he wasn't even watching anyway. 

"I told you, Jarvis, I'm  _busy,_ " Tony snaps. He instantly regrets it, hates being mad at any of his AIs even though that makes no rational sense because it's not like they have  _feelings_ , but Jarvis just mutters something that sounds suspiciously like  _sure_   _you are_. 

"Captain Rogers said that if you don't come out and see him he'll break the walls down," Jarvis says, with just the hint of reproachfulness in his voice. 

Tony sighs. "Let him in," he mutters. 

"I'm glad to see you're finally facing the guy," Jarvis comments, and Tony hates how fucking  _smug_ he sounds. 

"Don't get your hopes up, Jarv. I just don't feel like paying for renovations," or at least that's what he's telling himself when he hears heavy footsteps in the distance and lets out a sigh. So he's doing this now, apparently. "Hey, Cap," he calls out, louder this time, and his voice doesn't tremble but his heart is speeding up, and God, this is terrifying.  _What if he's homophobic and is about to punch me for insinuating that we're-- that we're soulmates or something? What if he just wants to find out what happened to Howard? What if he hates me? What if he didn't even hear what I said? What if he already had a soulmate whatifwhatifwhatif_

"Breathe," Steve whispers, closer than he expected, and he jumps, but there's a hand that settles on his shoulder, warm and broad, and it grounds him even as he begins to shake slightly. "I know you didn't want to see me, but-- it's alright, Tony, I don't want anything except to see you. Properly, this time. You ran out on me the day before yesterday, what was I supposed to think, huh?"

"That I'm-- a coward," Tony says, throat clenching up as he turns away. 

He can feel Steve shake his head as his grip becomes tighter. "Actually, it just kinda seemed like you were a little nervous. So I did my research, and believe me, you do  _not_ seem like the shy type from what I read on the internet."

Tony hazards a chuckle. "Rule number one of the internet," he says, and he can almost breathe now, "don't believe everything you read online." 

"Yeah, I figured as much," Steve says, and he can hear the grin in his voice, "when I read this quote, uh, what was it? 'Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist'."

"Well, to be fair, three quarters of that is true," Tony mumbles wryly, and he isn't panicking now, but he can't face Steve either, because that would mean facing this and Tony's going to cling onto normalcy with everything he has in him. "But it's kind of hard to be a playboy when people are disgusted that your timer is stuck at zero."

"But you said you were my soulmate," and if he didn't know better he'd think that Steve sounded almost disappointed. 

"It  _was_ stuck at zero," Tony corrects. "Until they found you. And then suddenly, it was counting down."

Steve's breath catches in his chest. "Look at me, Tony," he says, and when Tony freezes Steve lets go of him and walks around so he can't avoid looking at him anymore. So he looks: he stares up into those blue eyes that are clouded over with so many emotions that he can't even begin to decipher them all. Tony looks at the way his lips are bitten raw; how his skin is still pale, though not nearly as pale as it was when he was still asleep; how he's several inches taller than him and several inches broader too; how he looks like a fucking Abercrombie model even in that generic white t-shirt and the department store jeans; how Steve smiles at him like he's something wonderful. And then he's lifting his shirt up, and Tony tries not to stare at abs that are probably rock solid and the way his biceps tense as he raises the fabric, and then he's got something else to stare at: a timer, right above his heart, that reads 00:00:00:00 in a red that matches Tony's own.

"Before the war?" Tony asks, and he can't let himself  _hope_ , because this would be too good to be true and Tony Stark has never had things easy no matter what people say. 

Steve shakes his head. "Woke up and found that I had a day and a bit left."

Sweat is collecting in Tony's palms, and he wants to believe even if it seems impossible, and yet: "It's not Fury, is it?" Steve stares at him for a second in which Tony's sure he's blown it, that the other man is going to walk right out with a roll of his eyes. And then he's laughing, and Tony's laughing, and his heart feels light for the first time in ages and this is okay. It's okay. 

When they calm down, Steve sighs, and lowers his shirt. "When I was a kid," he begins, "the others used to tease me about having a timer that had the longest number of days anybody had ever seen. I calculated it once. Nearly a century. I thought fate was jus' cruel like that, 'cause nobody thought I'd make it to twenty, let alone ninety-three." Tony's stomach twists painfully, and he can't help but feel guilty, because he looks so broken up about it. "But that's not your fault. And things worked out, didn't they?" And Steve's giving him a small smile that he can't help but return. 

"When I was a kid," Tony admits, and he can't believe he's talking about his feelings, let alone his childhood, but-- Steve is his soulmate, after all, even if that's remarkably weird to think about, and somehow that fact alone manages to calm his nerves, "I thought I was just incapable of love. And Dad didn't exactly help with that." He screws up his face and lowers his voice in his best impression of Howard Stark, " _Boy, you don't deserve a soulmate._ " He laughs softly, suddenly aware of how screwed up that sounds, and it's not like it wasn't, but-- but, he realizes, Howard was  _wrong_ , and that's enough to make his day. He tells Steve as much, and it helps to ease the furious look that's suddenly taken over his face. 

"Still," says Steve, "I wish I could've been there." 

"I was kind of a dick back then," Tony tells him. "You would've hated me."

Steve shakes his head. "Never," he says, with such firm confidence that Tony almost believes him.

Instead, he steps back and takes a long, deep breath. "So what now?" he asks, exhaling. "What-- what are we?" 

"I don't expect you," begins Steve, like he's rehearsed this or something (hell, he probably has), "to-- to want to do this immediately. I mean, you have a life and other things and other people. And to be honest, the 21st century still scares the crap out of me. I like you, Tony, in that way that everyone said you do when you meet your soulmate. Heart fluttering and butterflies and all of that. But that doesn't mean that I'm going to be able to be what you deserve, what you need me to be-- at least, not right away."

Tony nods. "I get that," he murmurs. "Not that there's anyone else in my life-- nobody as important as you, that is," and if Steve is blushing, he's going to ignore that, "but I know what you mean."

"So what do _you_ want to do?" Steve asks him, hands lowering to fiddle with the belt loops of his jeans. It's a strange sight, and yet Tony is weirdly proud of the fact that he's made  _Captain America_ nervous. 

"How about this," says Tony, and his voice is hoarse and tender in a way that it's never been, "we take this slow. So I'll ask you on a date, and I can get to know you beyond the stuff my Dad told me, and you can get to know me beyond the stuff the media wrote about me-- and trust me, it's mostly unflattering. And maybe, at the end of it, I can kiss you." 

Steve smiles brightly at him, a million dollar smile that makes Tony understand in the blink of an eye how he managed to sell all those war bonds in the forties. "I'd like that, Tony." 

"Six o'clock," Tony says. "A movie. And then dinner. My treat. Italian, I think. Pizza. Something classic."

"Pick me up?" 

Tony lets out a chuckle. "Fury's going to have a field day when he finds out that Tony Stark's taking Steve Rogers on a date. Think he'll tell you to be home by curfew?" 

Steve actually snorts at that. "As long as we aren't doing anything naughty." His eyes glimmer in a way that sends chills up Tony's spine, and he feels like a blushing teenager all over again. "But we can save that for the third date, hmm?"

"You're such a tease," Tony says, and waves his hands as if to shoo away Steve. "I'll pick you up tomorrow, okay?"

"Don't be late," is all Steve replies with, even as he turns to head out of the workshop. "I'm an old-fashioned guy."

"'Course not," Tony mumbles, but he's already gone. 

(And if he's smiling when he gets back to work-- well, Jarvis certainly isn't going to comment on it.)

 

Tony is, like he promised, not late. In fact, he's something like three minutes late, but who's counting? 

Steve steps out in a brown leather jacket, another white tee and dark wash jeans that cling to his legs like nobody's business. Tony doesn't realize he's staring until Steve's waving his hand in front of Tony's face to get his attention, and he blinks quickly while flushing red. "Hey," he whispers. "You ready?"

"As ready as I'll ever be," Steve replies, and so he clambers into the passenger seat of Tony's least obnoxious car, and they drive off to the nearest cinema. Later, Tony won't remember what movie they watched, let alone the snacks they bought or how the guys in front of them kept texting throughout the two hours they were in there. Later, Tony won't remember how, after the movie was over and Tony had taken him to a little pizzeria away from the usual touristy spots, Steve had gulped down about a gallon of water after accidentally eating some of the jalapenos on his pizza, and how he'd laughed in delight at how the waitresses sang happy birthday for some kid as they brought out a cake and later gone up to wish a very awestruck little boy a great birthday. 

What Tony will remember is this: Steve's adorably confused expression when a pop culture reference in the movie goes over his head. Steve laughing as Tony tells him all about the stupid pranks he and Rhodey used to play on some of the more obnoxious frat boys back at MIT. Steve with his eyes looking so unmeasurably sad as Tony tells him, all rushed and nervous, about Afghanistan. Steve's lips on his in the car when they pull up by SHIELD headquarters, Steve's breath tasting of pepperoni pizza and cheap beer and bubblegum. Steve's hands in his hair, Steve warm against his body, Steve's soft smile when he pulls away. 

"Let's do this again sometime?" Steve whispers, hand on the door of the car but not quite ready to push it open just yet. 

"Anytime," is all Tony can say, and he sits there staring into space with the ghost of Steve still on his lips for a good few minutes after he disappears into the building. 

 

Eight dates pass before Steve texts him about how he's finally moved into his own place. Tony grins wide and calls him. "Where is it?" he asks, ignoring the stack of files he's supposed to go through before the meeting with the board this evening. 

"Brooklyn," Steve says with a little sigh. "Kinda makes me miss-- you know, back then." There's a few seconds of silence where Tony can hear Steve breathing before he says, "but the good thing about this is that we can make new memories. Something so I'm not looking back all the time."

"Yeah?" Tony murmurs, and his heart is swelling with warmth that he's going to ignore because Tony Stark is  _not_ a sop or anything of that sort, damn it. 

"Yeah," Steve says, and Tony can practically hear his smile. "Wanna come over? It'll be our version of a housewarming."

"I'm right there," is all Tony says before he's jumping into a car, board be damned. 

The apartment is still drab when Tony gets there: the walls white and bare, the dining table empty except for a couple of envelopes scattered on one side, the couch still covered with plastic. There's a king-sized bed, though, and he points this out to Steve with a wicked grin that makes the other man blush something crazy.

"Now? Right here?" Steve asks, but he steps closer to Tony, and it's like the electricity between them could power New York City for a lifetime. 

"Nothing more romantic than breaking in your apartment in true  _genius billionaire playboy philanthropist_ fashion," Tony quips, and leans in for a kiss. Steve chuckles against his lips, warm and  heavy against him in the brisk September breeze. And sleeping with him is everything that Tony's past encounters never were, passionate and blinding and earth-shattering, but waking up next to him? That's even better. 

"I'm so glad I found you," Steve murmurs, when the sun's just begun to set and he's turned to face Tony below the soft sheets they'd dozed off under.

Tony kisses him, slow and sweet, like he's never kissed anybody before. Steve's eyes are a hundred different colors in the glimmer of sunset, and their chests rise and fall perfectly in time with each other. He doesn't need to say  _me_ _too_ because Steve can feel it, taste it on him, and this hurts in a hundred different beautiful ways. He used to think he could never love anybody at all, and now he's facing another conundrum entirely: how is it possible to love somebody with every atom and every cell in you? How can you see another person and feel like you're going on an adventure and coming home at the exact same time? 

He has a hundred different questions, but for once, he's not rushing to his lab to figure out the answers. Because they're right here, in Steve's small smiles and Steve's ink-smudged fingers and the shortening space between them. 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading holy shit uh... i really don't know where this fic even came from all i know is that i was watching the avengers and my heart hurt from how much i love tony stark oops. anyway if you too wanna scream abt how much u love tony follow me @ shellheadtony on tumblr! <3


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